Ten Tales of the Inception World
by VerelLupin
Summary: Ten separate dreams, seven dreamers and three layers. Small drabbles that occupy the world of lucid dreaming. Mostly A/D with hints of other couples such as D/M and A/A.
1. Control

I can't update Free Falling right now folks. I am absolutely stumped. Arthur is not co-operating and I've written about three different treatments for the same scene. I'd like an opinion on whether Arthur should see Ariadne/Dom together or if he should just find her alone when he gets to limbo.

Anyhoo, I wrote this really abstract set of one shots. All are part of an Ipod drabble. I've done it with Harry Potter and Avatar: The Last Airbender and I thought it be good to practice again, maybe it will take me out of my rut.

Enjoy.

The first one is my crack story. I was intrigued by Arthur's "She was lovely" line. This would be AU.

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**Control – Mal and Arthur**

She was telling him what to do. She was saying to go deeper but this could only end in disaster. She wanted the control of their relationship.

He should have shut the door, he should have pushed her away but he couldn't say no to her. Nobody could.

She kissed him and he tasted her clove cigarettes, the scotch that she had nicked from her other lover. Her sweat mingled with the sheets and stayed.

He tried to stop her, he tried to remember whom he belonged to but when she tasted his skin he forgot about the vows he had made and so did Mal.

Cobb was his good friend but Cobb's wife was his everything.


	2. My Skin

I have a thing for love triangles. I do love my angst. (I blame Cobb)

Enjoy...

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**My Skin – Arthur/Ariadne/Dom**

Take a look at my body, I don't understand why you don't love me the same.

He promised forever and I wore the ring with a smile. A smile that was chipping at his resolve to stay.

I love you he said but he didn't mean it.

It seemed the thing to do. We should be together cause everybody said we would be.

He told me he made a mistake and I smiled breaking open a little more.

I was falling apart and my strength was leaving me.

Then the one nobody has seen coming came and told me he'd always love me regardless of what that other relationship had done to my smile.

I need him and he needs me. I love him and he loves me.

Arthur let me go and Dominic set me free.


	3. Marry You

My favorite couple (can you tell?)

They are so pretty...enjoy

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**Marry You – Dominic and Ariadne**

"Just ask her, Dom." Arthur told me but I couldn't do it.

She wasn't looking at me with the same longing anymore. She had given up. The waiting for me to get my shit together had taken its toll.

Now what was I going to do with a ring in my pocket? Eames mentioned a pawnshop and I mentioned my fist.

I followed everybody's advice and took her on a road trip because as long as she was happy I'd be content with having her by my side in any fashion she choose. Ariadne never expressed a desire to be more but I took her down to her favorite place for what would be our third anniversary if she had believed in such things, anyway.

I drank until there were Ariadnes everywhere. Until my tongue was loose and she couldn't shut me up. Until I proposed to all of them then proceeded to face plant onto the floor.

I woke up with a bag of ice on my face and my ring on her finger. She laughed in that airy way of hers and she told me she'd wanted to marry me too.

I bought Arthur a car when we got back, because he had been right and watched as he too kissed the floor. No wonder she took pictures, it was funny to see a loved one passed out cold on the floor.

But Ariadne was always right especially when she says yes.


	4. All Fall Down

I do love these two. Not together (I don't want to share Arthur) This is more a brother's kind of piece.

Enjoy...

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**All Fall Down - Eames & Arthur**

"I'll lead them on a merry chase, go to sleep Mr. Eames."

The snow was bright and cold. I envied the warm hotel. I was dispatched to the fight and I wondered how Arthur was doing.

"Hey,"

"There he is."

The stairs were always my favorite until I heard the music. "It's too soon."

How where the others? How was Eames?

"Cobb, do you hear that?"

"Yeah, its music."

"I heard it twenty minutes ago. I though it was the wind up here."

I set the charges and watched Fischer get catharsis. I wondered if Arthur was as scared as I was when I pressed the button and the hospital fell from beneath me.

I held onto the rails and counted down. The explosion pushed me into the metal floor and my team slammed into place.

I closed my eyes and wondered if Eames saw the bars of the elevator coming towards him. I kind of hoped he hadn't cause I opened mine and I was terrified.

We all fell down but we made it out. I offered a smile to Cobb and Eames smirked at Ariadne. Yusuf shook his head and got up to pee. Saito made the call and went back to sleep.

We were the loose ends of the team. The ones without anchors. Ariadne went with Cobb, Yusuf got an offer from Saito and Eames and I were left on the curb.

I admitted I was worried about him, Arthur admitted the same.

Cobb pulled up with Ariadne beside him and said that it made us family and to hurry up cause he had kids we all had to meet.

I agreed with the sentimental fool, got in and collected my twenty from Arthur.

I gave it happily and leaned fully against the backseat. Ariadne said we were on our way home. Eames mumbled we already were. I think Cobb may have wiped a tear from his eye.

I couldn't be sure since Eames had fallen asleep on my shoulder and was drooling.

I drooled on Arthur just because I could.


	5. Down We Fall

Is specificity needed? Do I have to tell you who my favorite couple is?

Enjoy...

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**Down We Fall - Ariadne & Dominic**

"Exactly who's mind are we going into?" She asks.

"Fischer's." He responds.

Dom stared out the scope and I asked him what awaited down there.

Ariadne said she couldn't really tell me. I said we didn't have time.

She was toxic to my self-pity, she was immaculate to my filthy past, she was everything I wanted and needed and couldn't bring myself to give up.

He was broken to my concern, he was cold to my heat, he was everything I should stay away from and wanted and couldn't get enough of.

I was the antidote, the clean beginning and the only one who would tell her the truth because lies had killed me once and I loved her too much for that.

I was the balm and balance and the only one who would soothe his nightmares without the guilt because I love him not in spite of his flaws but because of them.

She was my maze and my solution.

He was my destruction and my salvation.

Together we keep from falling down.


	6. Castle Walls

**I always felt that Fischer and Saito were the opposite of each other.  
**

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**Castle Walls – Fischer & Saito**

He knew what they said about him. The only Fischer left, a Fischer that didn't have the respect of his parent, even if he had the knowledge of how to run the company successfully. Not that it mattered; his father would run it from the grave.

The meal ticket for his godfather, who didn't have the heart to tell him that nothing he did would have ever made Fischer Sr. like him. Jr. looked too much like his mother and she was the only person Sr. had ever loved.

His father died and yet he felt no reprieve, no rest or relief.

It was just another empty ache that would never cease now that the only person who could fill it was dead.

Then he boarded a flight to L.A. and some random stranger offered his condolences and everything changed.

He dreamed a dream full of terror and intrigue. It turned his world upside down and the images of his father and godfather flipped flopped until they became unrecognizable in his own mind and a bolt of lightning shot out into the darkness of his mind.

The reprieve of not thinking while his kidnappers figured out what to do with him, the rest of knowing that someone, Mr. Charles was looking out for him. The relief that his father had wanted him to be different from his gruff self and that he loved Robert just as he was and not for whom Jr. had wanted to be.

He woke tired but calm and full of purpose for the first time in his life. He was approached by another man, who offered his condolences and his card, should he want to talk about his business.

Robert Fischer had fallen and broken but rose a stronger man for it, his father would have been very proud, that he knew.

He was the ruthless businessman that took out other companies the way normal people took out the trash. He bought a whole plane because it was easier and offered impossible dreams to people who has stopped sleeping.

Yet he was alone. His wife saw him as someone to pay the bills and his children were more interested in the latest gadget than they were in their father.

He had respect, fear and people but it did nothing for the loneliness he felt.

He got his respect when the Cobb/Arthur team agreed to a dangerous Inception. The fear came when the possibility that he might not wake up became real as they struggled through the second layer. But it wasn't until they came for him that he not only had people, but a family of like minded individuals that the loneliness that had been his ironic companion all his life finally ended.

He saw the lost but resolute younger man who had come to bury his father and he extended his condolences and his card. He might have spent all those years alone but it didn't mean that others couldn't benefit from it.

Young Robert would benefit and maybe Saito could offer something more than money for a change.


	7. Diamonds

**I tried to be more sympathetic to the Mal character but she is hard to feel bad for, at least for me. **

**Enjoy...  
**

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**Diamonds – Mal**

He was the brightest jewel in their dream crown and she was the only one who would handle it. She kept him polished and sharp, she kept him hidden.

She knew the moment that he was introduced to her by her father that he would be the one for her, the one that she would grow old with or so she had assumed.

She didn't count on her own tarnished vision to destroy them. She didn't see how she began to scuff him up. How her secrecy shattered him apart.

That was not what she had envisioned when she planned their trip to heaven. The scattered man could not be her legacy and she entered his dreams.

She saw what he did with her memory and she saw her unfiltered self through his eyes and knew that she could not help him. She was now what kept him broken.

Her father recognized the bright woman, the new jewel of the dream world and Mal urged the younger woman to come back, urged her to clean up the gem that had once shone like a diamond.

Mal saw him shine once more and only until she watched him let her go did Mal let go too.


	8. All Is Lost

**I wish Eames had more scenes. I always wondered what was running through his mind. This was my idea.**

* * *

**All Is Lost – Eames**

He saw their plan get shot full of holes and pierce Saito, heard the possibility of dying without dying and yet he didn't give up.

He saw the Charles gambit work but knew that only Arthur could keep them from being caught, saw how Dom was becoming consumed by his paranoia, by his guilt.

He knew that the girl was becoming a liability. She was becoming too attached to their leader to be objective. Arthur was too blind to see the fractures in the man. Saito and Yusuf had no knowledge and yet Eames didn't give up.

The third plan didn't go according to anything. Saito was dying, Fischer didn't believe in himself, Arthur was missing, Ariadne was too emotionally invested as was Dom. Only he was objective but he could see it pulling apart at the seams and still he didn't give up.

"Eames, Eames! Get up here, it's Fischer!"

He saw their fallen target and the blood pooling on his chest. Saw the remorse and pain on Cobb and the anger and jealousy in Ariadne's. He paid no mind to the other fallen, he knew exactly who she was, though Ariadne couldn't help pointing her out, that was when he gave up.


	9. Love Is Blindness

**Miles was always very helpful with Cobb and this plot bunny would not go away.  
**

* * *

**Love is Blindness – Stephen Miles**

He loved his grandchildren and he'd do anything to ensure that they would see their father again, even if it meant letting the suspected murderer of his daughter, as his ex-wife called Dominic, get away with it.

He loved his son-in-law. Knew how troubled he was and yet he assisted him in any way he could. He was the Minotaur in a maze made up of his own grief-stricken mind and Stephen was aware that Ariadne was not the mythical princess that saved the lost hero but he had no other choice and time was running out.

He loved his students, none more than Ariadne, a woman who was brilliant and young. An untried woman who could save him as well as Cobb. She was a chance to set right the wrongs he had committed with his own daughter, she was going to be the student that taught an old generation unless he was wrong and he ruined her too.

"Please get Miss Ariadne Mace and tell her that Professor Miles would…"

She had appeared at the bottom of the staircase, looking exactly as when he'd seen her the first time in his class, two years ago. Brown hair shoved aback and left to hang behind her, wide eyes trained not on him but on his very handsome son-in-law and he felt a twinge of fear that it was happening again but he shoved aside his misgivings and pressed on.

"Mr. Cobb has a job offer, he would like to discuss with you."

"Like a work placement?" she asked.

Cobb looked at him. His expressive blue eyes questioning Miles' wisdom in bringing in this innocent. He should have stopped it then but he was as selfish as Dom. He wanted his grandchildren to have their father too. So he had given the young man the go ahead.

"Not exactly."

"Ok, what do I have to do?"

"Is there somewhere more private we could talk?" Dom asked him.

"The school rooftop, it's got a nice view of the city." He heard himself say.

"Lead the way."

Stephen watched how Dom's much longer strides shortened to match Ariadne's and the twinge he felt earlier grew.

"You shouldn't have done that, Daddy," a voice said beside him.

"I know sweetheart," Miles responded.


	10. Love This Pain

**I like drama. I know, I'm bad. **

**Sorry about the formatting, its being weird but the story is supposed to jump around like that.  
**

* * *

**Love This Pain - Arthur**

"Earth to Ariadne, hello?"

"What…what were you saying?"

"Did you finish the model for Schultz?"

"Yeah, its on my desk…Cobb!" she shouted, "can you hold on a sec, I just got to ask him something real quick."

"Sure I'll be right here, I'm always just right here."

"What?" she asked turning back.

"Ariadne?" Cobb called impatiently.

"Never mind," Arthur replied.

A few days later she came up to him.

"You promised, come on."

"I will not teach you how to drive." The point man answered.

"Why?"

"Because he learned from me and he's afraid he'll teach you my bad habits." Dom said leaning on the railing of his house.

Arthur saw the other man pause, reach into his pocket and toss the keys to him.

"Be careful."

"What's wrong?" she asked him when he caught them.

Arthur told her that he was nervous. She kissed his cheek and they heard the balcony door slam behind them.

He didn't tell her that he had never driven Dom's car. That the car was his baby and nobody drove it but him. He taught her how to turn and the importance of checking mirrors and not tailgating. In a few lessons she handled the car perfectly. Arthur never drove it after that first lesson, he preferred Mal's car but then he'd learned in that one.

She got her permit and drove everybody's cars, his, Eames and Dom's car. Especially Dom's.

She passed her driving test in Arthur's but drove them straight to Cobb's to celebrate.

The extractor glared at Arthur and he realized that he still had a hold of her waist though Ariadne had eyes only for Dom.

"We have a job offer, you interested?"

Dominic shook his head but Ariadne asked where.

"London."

"Come on, bet they could use your skills." She said tugging at his sleeve.

"I just got back but you should go. It sounds like a good opportunity."

Dom opened her car door to wish them a good trip but she waved him forward and somehow he agreed to go as a consultant before Arthur had even started the damm thing.

Arthur hadn't noticed or seen anything wrong with her sitting in the front seat when they had gotten in the car at Heathrow airport.

He was going to drive but Dominic missed driving his Audi and Ariadne having just learned was not comfortable driving on the wrong side of the road. She rode shotgun and he watched in disbelief as she fiddled with the radio.

Dom only moved her hand once and that was only to set the heater on. She stopped rubbing her hands together and settled contently back in the seat.

Arthur suddenly wished he had ridden with Eames but then he'd be admitting that Eames had been right that something was going on with Cobb and Ariadne.

They celebrated Saint Patrick's at Eames' and it seemed the suspicions were unfounded until Arthur noticed that the heavily dyed green beer that Eames' made had no business being on Cobb's lips since he wasn't drinking.

Ariadne dropped onto the Extractor's lap and handed him her glass.

The next morning, he saw them asleep on the same couch they'd sat in all night and it was with a heavy heart that Arthur realized that Ariadne had been sharing more than her drink with Cobb but he decided to stay anyway.


End file.
